What is the deal with all of these YouTube videos of tiny plastic food?

Seriously, what is the deal with these teeny-tiny miniature food videos, and why can't we stop watching them? Why wash the dishes? The food is plastic! The ladles that hold themselves up, I just am overwhelmed with the silliness of some of these things.

Totally mesmerizing. Going through the motions in silence, the flawless editing, the setting, and the tiny plastic clinking sounds all add up to quite an effect. Soothing, compelling, and not a little bit disturbing. Thank you for sharing this!

That’s nothing. Take a song you like (works especially well with K-Pop songs from groups like 2NE1 or 4Minute), type the group’s name into the YouTube search box along with the word ‘chipmunk’, and be amazed at the awesomeness, and incredible selection.

The thing that disturbs me is that I have absolutely no idea what they’re supposed to be cooking most of the time. I just don’t recognise anything. I think I need to learn Japanese cookery. There’s a whole world of cuisine out there I’ve never experimented with!

OK, the guy pretending to skin and gut his tiny plastic fish had me burst out laughing! I can only hope that this stuff is just meant for kids that want to play kitchen tea-set games and that there aren’t real adults playing with these in their rooms…

There is something deeply, deeply disturbing about all this, which comes as something completely new to me.

I’m tempted to mumble something about Baudrillard’s simulacra and simulacrum, or something witty about Roland Barthes’ essays on Japanese food, or just something mundane about the death of actual skills needed to practice a hobby (like, oh, say… learning how to cook actual food).

I have always kept from buying miniatures except for a period in high school where I blew several K$ on RPG miniatures because I know I would probably go all OCD like a gambler again. I know that all that cool little stuff really serves no practical purpose and is only a weird psycho-neuro fetish thing. This means all that stuff if I get it is for my kids and I can enjoy vicariously. I do love to see other people who have detailed miniatures though especially if displayed as a diorama or doll house.

I know most of those products, and the kitchen set up is about what I had in Tokyo (in a real Japanese apartment, though, everything is about twice as large as shown in the video). Perky-Pat was the first thing that popped into my mind as well – just at mind-altering chemicals, and you’ve got the perfect set up for the gaijin who misses expat life.

I found konapun when I was looking at these, but it didn’t register with me what that really was until just now. That’s also completely mesmerizing. RRcherrypie has a ton of konapun videos as well as rement. So bizarre.

Wow. For some reason I had a really visceral reaction to this. It blew my mind. I wonder what percentage of the people who do this actually cook and what percentage eat pre-packaged or restaurant food mostly?

This warrants a study. Several others above have remarked on the calming, hypnotic quality of the videos, and several have mentioned how much they like the little clicking sounds. It’s fingernails on a chalkboard to me. Too reminiscent of hard-soled shoes on concrete. The sound of several nattily-attired businessmen and businesswomen click-clacking across an otherwise silent corporate plaza has always driven me up the wall; the single most intolerable foley sound in the entire library for me, next to violent regurgitation. And now this.

I wonder what exactly makes this sound so soothing and/or satisfying to others? I wonder if there’s some common mindset (or syndrome) at work?

I love Re-ment! I think the average person who owns Re-ment uses them as doll accessories or for pictures (me). The percentage of collectors who actually “cook” with them is low, imo. That being said, I loved these videos. I learned a few things from it too, not being an expert in Japanese cooking. I’m an American and under 40 if that helps.

I also found the sounds soothing, but if you want soothing sounds, do what others have already said and do a search for “Konapun.” Very fun to watch and the sounds make me happy for some reason.

Videos like the one posted here trigger mine like crazy, and I attribute it to the sounds that are being made. I also get the tingling sensation if I’m watching someone do something that requires great skill and/or attention (this video is one of my biggest triggers ever: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io2KFwZ5B8w), or if someone is taking photos of me with a camera that makes an audible shutter noise (like a dSLR).

Wow! Fascinating… thanks! I’m familiar with the sensation, though my triggers are usually scents and musical pieces and particular varieties of touch, but I never realized that some people get that kind of frisson through observing a careful, painstaking process, or from those tiny little sounds that make me wanna cringe. I think it’s because those sounds have too strong an effect on me (like fingernails on a blackboard, as I mentioned before), and my hypersensitivity to such sounds prevents me from enjoying them or finding them the least bit soothing. The metal rings on the lasts in that YouTube video you linked, for instance: agonizing!

Thank you so much for posting this link. I have this response to several things- the cleaning lady spraying and wiping the counters and cleaning the windows, my coworker drumming pens, and a few other things- I always thought I was just completely insane- It is SO great to see that this is a real *thing* and that others experience it too! WOW!

We buy these tiny food kits in NYC’s Chinatown. They’re really fun and cute. I don’t think they’re inspiring enough to make videos about them. all we do is sort of buy them and look at them for a few minutes and then sort of forget about it in a big plastic bag.

Weirdly soothing is exactly the right way to describe watching these. The little clicking noise of the plastic utensils, and watching the giant hand “cut” things or “stir” or whatever is just really nice. ????? but why????